The preferred embodiments of this invention relate to inexpensive, disposable carriers for beverages, food and other items.
The prior art includes a number of patents that show carriers for food and beverages. Representative prior art carriers are described in the Hunter U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,738,217 and 5,927,502. Although the carriers described in these patents are improvements over other carriers, the Hunter carriers have several significant deficiencies. Thus, cups of various sizes are not easily carried since the Hunter carriers are not designed to carry beverage containers of various sizes and shapes. The Hunter carriers are bottomless so that the beverage cups necessarily touch the stadium ground or floor when the carrier is placed on the ground or floor. And, the Hunter carriers do not insure that the attitude of the food tray remains horizontal. Rather, upward movement of the beverage cups tend to tilt the tray, especially if cups of different sizes are used or the cups are not uniformly distributed in the carrier.
The preferred embodiments of this invention provide an inexpensive beverage and food carrier having a wide variety of uses. One particular use is in ballparks or stadium to carry food from a food and drink stand to one""s seat. A particular feature of this preferred embodiment is that beverage containers of different sizes may be conveniently carried. Thus, the preferred embodiments include a two-piece carrier, formed from only two pieces of cardboard, a lower carrier having a carrying handle and an upper tray for food and like items.
The beverage containers rest upon a bottom provided by four interlocking cardboard flaps. These beverage cups and containers, be they foam, paper, plastic, round, square or otherwise, are thus protected by the carrier bottom from touching the stadium floor. The upper food tray slides over the handle and rests upon the top edges of the side walls forming the lower container.
In the preferred embodiments, the side walls extend upwardly from the container floor higher than the height of the beverage containers, with their top edges supporting the bottom of the food tray. As a result, the attitude of tray is maintained parallel to the beverage carrier.
Another significant advantage of carriers constructed in accordance with the preferred embodiments of this invention is that the carrier as constructed is collapsed for convenient shipping and storing and quickly and easily assembled at the ballpark or football stadium. The collapsed carrier is advantageously only five times the thickness of the sheet of cut material used to form the carrier.